If you stop thinking about it as an us vs them between Apple and non-Apple, and start thinking about it as “are those corpos ripping us off” it’s a lot easier to wrap your head around this.
Your entire point is that Apple is not bad because the general state of Android is worse. I’m calling both bad. And I’m blaming Apple for leading that trend – which also doesn’t absolve most Android manufacturers from following that trend, but Apple still made it.
Also, this whole debate is in the context of a bill that mandates that phone manufacturers make batteries replaceable. The Android side of things actually had that for a long time, while Apple has been doing unibody phones from the beginning and hammered that idea into the whole industry through years of insistence. That’s why I put so much of the blame on them.
You brought up the software support issue and I corrected you as you are wrong. Apple didn’t start anything and lead the industry in ongoing software support.
In my opinion legislating replaceable batteries is anti-consumer as they will be forced into wider devices that aren’t waterproof. I would prefer that they legislated that battery replacement guides be made available by the manufacturer with genuine parts made available at a low profit margin to enable user replacement with the correct tools.
I’m not ignoring anything, I am trying to be factual and provide accurate information about software support periods.
If I’m being idealistic, I’d prefer that all devices support foss and that vendor blobs aren’t required, that is more important than bringing back carrying a spare battery in your bag. Until then we have patchy android software support and Apple’s closed ecosystem as the only major players.
The Samsung Xcover6 is waterproof. The Samsung Galaxy S5 was waterproof nearly ten years ago. Both of these phones have toolless user-replaceable batteries. This excuse is moot and always has been. (On the same note, both of these phones have a headphone jack as well, which is also often brought up as “impossible to waterproof”.)
But the legislation is not even calling for that. There is nothing in the law preventing a company from making a waterproof phone (and I would be strongly against it if there was), and there is actually not even any text preventing the use of screws for battery replacement. It just calls for it to be easy. That’s an engineering challenge, and Apple has many smart engineers who could figure this out – for example, they could go back to the two screws next to the charging port to open up the phone (they’d just have to make them torx or phillips, not pentalobe, since proprietary tools are prohibited by the same legislation) and not glue in the battery. They don’t have to adopt the Fairphone’s or the Xcover6’s style, they have options, the law only mandates the end result, not the method.
But also, your idealized phone exists, it’s called the Fairphone. It’s very likely that it greatly influenced the EU’s decisionmaking on this one by providing an example of what a phone can be like.
As for this:
Apple didn’t start anything and lead the industry in ongoing software support.
So you deny that the iPhone ushered in an entirely new paradigm for phones that was wildly different from anything ever before? Because that’s where we lost the mindset of using a phone literally until it breaks, no time limits, just like you can do it today with a laptop, or you could always do on a “dumb phone”. You can’t both credit them for inventing this whole new class of devices but refuse to blame them for the planned obsolescence built into that class of devices from the very beginning.
Xcover 6 is 9.9mm and IP68 dust/water resistant (up to 1.5m for 35 min)
iPhone 14 is 7.8mm and IP68 dust/water resistant (up to 6m for 30 min)
Galaxy S5 is 8.1mm and IP67 dust/water resistant (up to 1m for 30 min)
Fairphone 4 is 10.5mm and IP54, dust and splash resistant
You can see thickness is increased to support replaceable batteries, and the S5 has a lower IP rating with the Fairphone 4 having a terrible rating.
As for the iPhone, the LG Prada was first. If we allow buttons Blackberry and Nokia n95 were doing smartphones well before Apple. My comment about FOSS and no vendor blobs wasn’t that such a product doesn’t exist, it was that legislation to open up the hardware would provide more consumer benefits than thicker phones with lower water ratings. With how popular power banks are I can’t see people carrying replacement batteries around like they did in the 90s - 2000s.
Forcing all manufacturers into right to repair is valid and needs to be done, I think trying to bring back popping the cover off phones to slap a spare battery is has passed and we would be better served with detailed guides from manufactures, and cheaper to access genuine parts including batteries. We should also have protections against warranties being void if a battery is replaced.
But the legislation is not even calling for that. There is nothing in the law preventing a company from making a waterproof phone (and I would be strongly against it if there was), and there is actually not even any text preventing the use of screws for battery replacement. It just calls for it to be easy.
This means that a customer will have to able to remove and replace the battery of the device easily and without tools.
The EU will introduce the new law to make it easier to recycle batteries, make smartphones easier to repair and to reduce the amount of e-waste.
The vote was approved by European Council and Parliament and will come into effect by 2027.
This means that a customer will have to able to remove and replace the battery of the device easily and without tools.
Are we seriously talking about the 2mm difference between the iPhone 14 and the Xcover 6? If that’s what we need to give up then so be it, it’s such an arbitrary metric. The point isn’t to eliminate the need for power banks, it’s about replacing the internal battery when it is inevitably worn out, which is currently the main component that’s enforcing a limited lifetime on the device.
Also, I’m fairly sure the law says no proprietary tools, not no tools whatsoever. But no tools would also be doable, as proven by the Xcover 6, which is realistically on par with the iPhone at the cost of 2mm. I trust that Apple would be able to shave that down too if they actually tried.
The news articles I’ve read all say without tools, so we have the EU forcing phone designs that are 27% thicker with reduced IP78 ratings for what?
The better solution is manufacturers to provide detailed guides on their websites about how to change a battery, provide genuine replacement parts for 5 - 10 years for a reasonable price and not cancel warranty coverage if a user replaces a battery.
As I’ve said before Right To Repair is very important, changing laws to force phones back to the early 2000s with pop-off back covers and people carrying spare batteries around is a waste of time.
The problem is, under the current model battery repairs are prohibitively difficult for most people. The amount of effort it takes to open a phone, remove the glue safely, and swap out the battery, as well as the amount of ambiguity and complexity in the process is enough for most people to nope out and instead just go with the manufacturer approved solution of buying a new phone and tossing the old one. Which is exactly what the EU aims to prevent.
A phone that’s 27% thicker, which is still just 2mm (alright, 2.1mm… we’re really splitting hairs here) is well worth it for sustainability. And ensuring people actually replace their batteries is about more than just making the option available, you need to make it easy to use. Apple itself showed it time and time again that people vastly prefer things that are easy to use than “better” alternatives that you can technically use for the same purpose.
Besides, we’re talking about the same company here that forced people to use wireless headphones by taking out the jack, forced faceid on people by taking out the fingerprint reader, and on and on. And all of these changes were heralded as positive and forward-looking things by the userbase. So why is that so, but when the EU tries to do something like that, it’s not even a bad thing?
And again, no one is forcing Apple to adopt the same system as the Xcover6. An engineering goal has been given to them, it’s up to them how they accomplish it.
It’s $99 for an official battery replacement from Apple and less from phone shops. Offical swap in batteries would be what $60? Maybe more. $40 - $50 labour is reasonable.
I’m against low repairability scores and glued in batteries and am arguing that a middle ground can exist where batteries are reasonably easy to replace and we don’t end up with pop off back covers. Which make phones 27% thicker and lower IP ratings.
We are going in circles, so are likely better off leaving it here.
And I’m saying that toolless repairability (if that’s even actually mandated) doesn’t require phones to have lower IP ratings or disruptive thickness. The difference between the Xcover6’s 1.5m for 60 minutes and the iPhone 14’s 6m for 60 minutes is already marginal at best, and the Xcover6 is not engineered to be a thin phone, Samsung obviously doesn’t want it to eat into their S23 or A54 sales.
I trust that Apple would be able to engineer a phone exactly to your desires even with the mandate present, they just currently have no incentive to do so. They are, however, very much incentivized to enforce device failures, put disposable components in devices that are extremely hard to dispose of, and push people towards buying electronics at a higher frequency than necessary through exorbitant repair costs and discouraging self repair. Once those incentives flip around, you’ll see some awesome phones from them even with the design goals – unless they just throw a temper tantrum because they don’t like being pushed around.
The Fairphone 5, arriving this year, is already going to be significantly thinner, while sacrificing nothing of the repairability. (Which includes a lot more than just a pop off back, it also has a removable screen, as opposed to having the whole phone built on the screen.) And it’s not hard to add some o-rings. If a small company can figure this out while having to stay price-competitive while also being constrained by the low volume and the fair trade materials that are more expensive due to the smaller market and the audits for human rights violations, then it should be a walk in the park for Apple with their resources.
You’re still ignoring the last part I said:
Your entire point is that Apple is not bad because the general state of Android is worse. I’m calling both bad. And I’m blaming Apple for leading that trend – which also doesn’t absolve most Android manufacturers from following that trend, but Apple still made it.
Also, this whole debate is in the context of a bill that mandates that phone manufacturers make batteries replaceable. The Android side of things actually had that for a long time, while Apple has been doing unibody phones from the beginning and hammered that idea into the whole industry through years of insistence. That’s why I put so much of the blame on them.
You brought up the software support issue and I corrected you as you are wrong. Apple didn’t start anything and lead the industry in ongoing software support.
In my opinion legislating replaceable batteries is anti-consumer as they will be forced into wider devices that aren’t waterproof. I would prefer that they legislated that battery replacement guides be made available by the manufacturer with genuine parts made available at a low profit margin to enable user replacement with the correct tools.
I’m not ignoring anything, I am trying to be factual and provide accurate information about software support periods.
If I’m being idealistic, I’d prefer that all devices support foss and that vendor blobs aren’t required, that is more important than bringing back carrying a spare battery in your bag. Until then we have patchy android software support and Apple’s closed ecosystem as the only major players.
The Samsung Xcover6 is waterproof. The Samsung Galaxy S5 was waterproof nearly ten years ago. Both of these phones have toolless user-replaceable batteries. This excuse is moot and always has been. (On the same note, both of these phones have a headphone jack as well, which is also often brought up as “impossible to waterproof”.)
But the legislation is not even calling for that. There is nothing in the law preventing a company from making a waterproof phone (and I would be strongly against it if there was), and there is actually not even any text preventing the use of screws for battery replacement. It just calls for it to be easy. That’s an engineering challenge, and Apple has many smart engineers who could figure this out – for example, they could go back to the two screws next to the charging port to open up the phone (they’d just have to make them torx or phillips, not pentalobe, since proprietary tools are prohibited by the same legislation) and not glue in the battery. They don’t have to adopt the Fairphone’s or the Xcover6’s style, they have options, the law only mandates the end result, not the method.
But also, your idealized phone exists, it’s called the Fairphone. It’s very likely that it greatly influenced the EU’s decisionmaking on this one by providing an example of what a phone can be like.
As for this:
So you deny that the iPhone ushered in an entirely new paradigm for phones that was wildly different from anything ever before? Because that’s where we lost the mindset of using a phone literally until it breaks, no time limits, just like you can do it today with a laptop, or you could always do on a “dumb phone”. You can’t both credit them for inventing this whole new class of devices but refuse to blame them for the planned obsolescence built into that class of devices from the very beginning.
Xcover 6 is 9.9mm and IP68 dust/water resistant (up to 1.5m for 35 min)
iPhone 14 is 7.8mm and IP68 dust/water resistant (up to 6m for 30 min)
Galaxy S5 is 8.1mm and IP67 dust/water resistant (up to 1m for 30 min)
Fairphone 4 is 10.5mm and IP54, dust and splash resistant
You can see thickness is increased to support replaceable batteries, and the S5 has a lower IP rating with the Fairphone 4 having a terrible rating.
As for the iPhone, the LG Prada was first. If we allow buttons Blackberry and Nokia n95 were doing smartphones well before Apple. My comment about FOSS and no vendor blobs wasn’t that such a product doesn’t exist, it was that legislation to open up the hardware would provide more consumer benefits than thicker phones with lower water ratings. With how popular power banks are I can’t see people carrying replacement batteries around like they did in the 90s - 2000s.
Forcing all manufacturers into right to repair is valid and needs to be done, I think trying to bring back popping the cover off phones to slap a spare battery is has passed and we would be better served with detailed guides from manufactures, and cheaper to access genuine parts including batteries. We should also have protections against warranties being void if a battery is replaced.
The EU will introduce the new law to make it easier to recycle batteries, make smartphones easier to repair and to reduce the amount of e-waste. The vote was approved by European Council and Parliament and will come into effect by 2027. This means that a customer will have to able to remove and replace the battery of the device easily and without tools.
Are we seriously talking about the 2mm difference between the iPhone 14 and the Xcover 6? If that’s what we need to give up then so be it, it’s such an arbitrary metric. The point isn’t to eliminate the need for power banks, it’s about replacing the internal battery when it is inevitably worn out, which is currently the main component that’s enforcing a limited lifetime on the device.
Also, I’m fairly sure the law says no proprietary tools, not no tools whatsoever. But no tools would also be doable, as proven by the Xcover 6, which is realistically on par with the iPhone at the cost of 2mm. I trust that Apple would be able to shave that down too if they actually tried.
9.9mm - 7.8mm = 2.1mm
2.1mm extra on a 7.8mm device is 27% thicker!
The news articles I’ve read all say without tools, so we have the EU forcing phone designs that are 27% thicker with reduced IP78 ratings for what?
The better solution is manufacturers to provide detailed guides on their websites about how to change a battery, provide genuine replacement parts for 5 - 10 years for a reasonable price and not cancel warranty coverage if a user replaces a battery.
As I’ve said before Right To Repair is very important, changing laws to force phones back to the early 2000s with pop-off back covers and people carrying spare batteries around is a waste of time.
The problem is, under the current model battery repairs are prohibitively difficult for most people. The amount of effort it takes to open a phone, remove the glue safely, and swap out the battery, as well as the amount of ambiguity and complexity in the process is enough for most people to nope out and instead just go with the manufacturer approved solution of buying a new phone and tossing the old one. Which is exactly what the EU aims to prevent.
A phone that’s 27% thicker, which is still just 2mm (alright, 2.1mm… we’re really splitting hairs here) is well worth it for sustainability. And ensuring people actually replace their batteries is about more than just making the option available, you need to make it easy to use. Apple itself showed it time and time again that people vastly prefer things that are easy to use than “better” alternatives that you can technically use for the same purpose.
Besides, we’re talking about the same company here that forced people to use wireless headphones by taking out the jack, forced faceid on people by taking out the fingerprint reader, and on and on. And all of these changes were heralded as positive and forward-looking things by the userbase. So why is that so, but when the EU tries to do something like that, it’s not even a bad thing?
And again, no one is forcing Apple to adopt the same system as the Xcover6. An engineering goal has been given to them, it’s up to them how they accomplish it.
It’s $99 for an official battery replacement from Apple and less from phone shops. Offical swap in batteries would be what $60? Maybe more. $40 - $50 labour is reasonable.
I’m against low repairability scores and glued in batteries and am arguing that a middle ground can exist where batteries are reasonably easy to replace and we don’t end up with pop off back covers. Which make phones 27% thicker and lower IP ratings.
We are going in circles, so are likely better off leaving it here.
And I’m saying that toolless repairability (if that’s even actually mandated) doesn’t require phones to have lower IP ratings or disruptive thickness. The difference between the Xcover6’s 1.5m for 60 minutes and the iPhone 14’s 6m for 60 minutes is already marginal at best, and the Xcover6 is not engineered to be a thin phone, Samsung obviously doesn’t want it to eat into their S23 or A54 sales.
I trust that Apple would be able to engineer a phone exactly to your desires even with the mandate present, they just currently have no incentive to do so. They are, however, very much incentivized to enforce device failures, put disposable components in devices that are extremely hard to dispose of, and push people towards buying electronics at a higher frequency than necessary through exorbitant repair costs and discouraging self repair. Once those incentives flip around, you’ll see some awesome phones from them even with the design goals – unless they just throw a temper tantrum because they don’t like being pushed around.
The Fairphone 5, arriving this year, is already going to be significantly thinner, while sacrificing nothing of the repairability. (Which includes a lot more than just a pop off back, it also has a removable screen, as opposed to having the whole phone built on the screen.) And it’s not hard to add some o-rings. If a small company can figure this out while having to stay price-competitive while also being constrained by the low volume and the fair trade materials that are more expensive due to the smaller market and the audits for human rights violations, then it should be a walk in the park for Apple with their resources.